Nice Boots

The first time around, they’re both completely and irretrievably out of their heads. It’s before the war, lying in a muddy field somewhere on somebody’s damp jacket spread out beneath them like a patch of sky on the grass, and they’ve both taken enough interesting chemicals to make the war the least of their troubles. Jude feels pins and needles every time their skins touch, which is difficult to avoid with Max draped on top of him like he weighs nothing at all, hipbones digging into Jude’s stomach. They’re both more or less in a daze, before Max is the one to break it.

“So, uh,” he says into the hollow of Jude’s collarbone, “nice shoes?”

It doesn’t go anywhere, though, because before he can get anything close to into Jude’s jeans Pru is yelling at them both that there’s some bus they’ve both got to be on and neither of them were wearing shoes in the first place.

—

The second time, it’s after the war, and Jude doesn’t bother saying a damn thing. He’s thinner then, not the soft-edged boy who he could fade into without a second thought in the middle of a muddy field mid-acid-trip. He still smells a little like the inside of a taxi, not unpleasantly but very noticeably.

Max presses him harder, guiding rather than forcing, and that plus the sharp edge of the brick stabbing Jude in the back makes him gasp. It really does hurt (both of them, he suspects, being utter novices at this buggery-in-alleyways-behind-clubs business) but this cannot be said to be anything but sharp, and real, and sober.